HVLA

HVLA Blog Post – Adele Bildersee – The Dalton School

April is “Poetry Month” and here at Dalton and we make a very big deal about it!

The Library has a plethora of books and a “who wrote it?” on display all over the library.  Here are some of the mystery poems.  Can you identify the author?

When Towers Fell                                         Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Bilingual Love Poem                                     where I live,

The Raven                                                      To My Dear and Loving Husband

Yogurt                                                                        A Red, Red Rose

Still I Rise                                                       Venus Transiens

Back Woman                                                  Living with a Bodhisattva Cat is Intimidating

The Many Secrets of T.S. Eliot                      Modesties                  

Dickhead

The Dalton Poetry Club will hold its annual Poetry Reading in the Goldman Library on Tuesday, April 14th at 3:30pm.  Students write original poems and recite them for other students, teachers, parents, administrators, and guests. The writing is astonishing.  Often they host a professional poet as a guest. Please feel free to come if you can. 

David Orr’s 10 Favorite Poetry Books of 2014   ~~  NY Times December 22, 2014

David Orr writes the Book Review’s On Poetry column, and is the author of “Beautiful and Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry.”

Louise Glück, “Faithful and Virtuous Night.” The recent winner of the National Book Award, Glück’s 14th collection is wry, dreamlike and snow-covered: a testament to her late career resurgence, and to her increasing ability to inhabit personas like, but not identical to, her own (in this case, a male painter’s).

Saskia Hamilton, “Corridor.” Hamilton writes short, smart, sometimes enigmatic poems that seem carved out of driftwood, or old bones. “Corridor” is her fourth collection, and one of her best.

Fanny Howe, “Second Childhood.” A memorable meditation on old age and childhood, delivered through poems that often mimic parables and fairy tales. One of the very prolific Howe’s more approachable efforts.

J. D. McClatchy, “Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems.” McClatchy is widely associated with the late James Merrill, whose literary estate he manages with Stephen Yenser. The best of his own poetry is far pricklier than Merrill’s, and sets an appealingly black edge against the pastel whimsy of much contemporary writing.

Joshua Mehigan, “Accepting the Disaster.” Mehigan is one of America’s most gifted formalists, and as his title indicates, his sensibility is not a sunny one — rarely have so many people bought the farm in iambic pentameter. But this is an observation, not a criticism, and “The Orange Bottle,” in particular, gives new life to the tired compliment “tour de force.”

Gregory Pardlo, “Digest.” A brainy, compassionate book (Pardlo’s second) that uses a pleasingly large stylistic palette to paint a portrait of fatherhood, racial politics and Brooklyn before it became a place to buy $30 glasses of bourbon.

Kevin Prufer, “Churches.” A gothic extravaganza featuring alligators, avalanches and medical devices left inside bodies, delivered largely in long, musical free verse lines. Poetry at full boil, poured with deliberate abandon.

Alan Shapiro, “Reel to Reel.” Shapiro is a master of the middle tone (as well as most of the formal techniques in poetry’s capacious toolbox), and he probes the deeper places of the self with a skilled psychologist’s gentle persistence. A delicately disquieting collection.

Arthur Sze, “Compass Rose.” Sze’s ninth book is a subtle, patient, many-layered examination of consciousness (his own and humanity’s generally) that isn’t afraid to leave a little appropriate mystery between the lines (“…to the writer of fragments, each fragment is a whole”).

Christian Wiman, “Once in the West.” Wiman, formerly the editor of Poetry magazine, is an affecting poet in his own right. By turns elegiac, brooding and funny, “Once in the West” is one of the very few American poetry books to deal seriously (and successfully) with the religious impulse.